Montgomery County DA to investigate perjury charge against state Attorney General Kathleen Kane

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Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will spend up to two years behind bars followed by probation that will keep her under court supervision for nearly a decade for crimes she committed in pursuit of retribution against political foes.

Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will spend up to two years behind bars followed by probation that will keep her under court supervision for nearly a decade for crimes she committed in pursuit of retribution against political foes.

CAPTION

Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will spend up to two years behind bars followed by probation that will keep her under court supervision for nearly a decade for crimes she committed in pursuit of retribution against political foes.

Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will spend up to two years behind bars followed by probation that will keep her under court supervision for nearly a decade for crimes she committed in pursuit of retribution against political foes.

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Kathleen Kane called her final day as Pennsylvania's attorney general "bittersweet" as she arrived at her Scranton office Wednesday morning.

Kathleen Kane called her final day as Pennsylvania's attorney general "bittersweet" as she arrived at her Scranton office Wednesday morning.

Montgomery County DA takes up perjury case against Attorney General Kathleen Kane

HARRISBURG — The Montgomery County district attorney's office will review a grand jury report to determine whether state Attorney General Kathleen Kane should face perjury charges related to a newspaper's gaining confidential investigative material from her office.

District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman's announcement Wednesday came a day after the state Supreme Court rejected Kane's challenge of a grand jury investigation into whether she or someone in her office leaked grand jury secrets to the Philadelphia Daily News to discredit her critics.

"As with every matter considered by the district attorney's office, this referral made to the district attorney from a non-law-enforcement outside entity will be carefully and thoroughly reviewed in a manner that reflects the district attorney's commitment to fairness, integrity and justice," Ferman said in a statement.

Hours later, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Kane, according to aides, undermined an investigation of a former state gaming official with ties to former Mount Airy Casino owner Louis DeNaples by quashing key subpoenas.

Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said Wednesday night on philly.com that months after taking office in 2013, Kane revoked subpoenas already delivered to DeNaples, who is a politically connected Scranton-area millionaire, and William Conaboy, another political power player in northeastern Pennsylvania, Kane's home turf.

Ferman's decision to take up the perjury case further clouds Kane's political future, said Chris Borick, a Muhlenberg College pollster and political science professor.

"If charges are brought, it's going to be really hard for her to maintain the credibility in her office to do that job effectively," he said.

Ferman, a Republican, is not without her own political risks in taking on a case she did not initiate but now must settle. She is running for a spot on the county court in the May primary election, and if she wins that race, she'll run in the November election.

If Ferman doesn't file charges by the time the race is underway, it's an issue her opponents will use against her, said Thomas Baldino, a Wilkes University political science professor.

Baldino said if Ferman decides to prosecute on lesser charges, her opponents could claim she's going soft on Kane. In either scenario, he said, Ferman should respond by claiming she followed the letter of the law and did not factor politics into her decision.

"She should take the high ground," Baldino said. "How the public sees it is a completely different matter."

In its 4-1 ruling Tuesday, the high court rejected arguments by Kane's lawyers that a Montgomery County judge overstepped his authority in appointing a special prosecutor to look into how the Daily News obtained 2009 grand jury material that was supposed to remain under wraps.

The court said Judge William Carpenter correctly relied on legal precedent, set in Dauphin County, that allows judges to appoint special counsel to look into cases where grand jury secrecy law might have been breached. Carpenter named Thomas Carluccio to do the work.

Tuesday's court ruling paved the way for Ferman to treat Carluccio's report as a routine tip that someone might have violated a law.

"Upon the conclusion of the law enforcement investigation, the district attorney's office will review the applicable laws and make determinations as to whether criminal charges are warranted against any individual," Ferman's statement said.

Kane, a former Lackawanna County assistant district attorney turned stay-at-home mom, rocketed to the top of Democratic politics when she won election to become Pennsylvania's top law enforcement official in 2012. She won in large part by vowing to examine why it took 23 months for her predecessor to arrest and charge retired Penn State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky with sexually abusing children.

But 2014 was nearly all downhill for Kane. It started in March 2014, when the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story critical of Kane's decision to drop a sting investigation into state lawmakers from Philadelphia suspected of accepting cash from an undercover informant.

Then Kane got into arguments with other prosecutors and the state police in June by erroneously claiming Sandusky molested two people while he was under investigation.

In December, the grand jury returned its report recommending Kane face perjury charges. According to court records, the Daily News got two internal agency documents concerning a 2009 grand jury investigation involving J. Whyatt Mondesire, a political activist and a one-time Philadelphia NAACP chapter president. One was a 2009 memo written by then-Deputy Attorney General William Davis Jr. The other was a transcript of a March 21, 2014, interview with special agent Michael Miletto, who had worked on the Mondesire case.

The Miletto recording was made five days after the Philadelphia Inquirer published the sting story. Miletto was critical of how Frank Fina, a former state prosecutor who had feuded with Kane, had handled the Mondesire case, which did not lead to charges and was a secret until the Daily News revealed it.

Those issues caused Kane's political star to rise and fall like no other politician before, Borick said.

"We don't see that type of meteoric rise and meteoric decline in Pennsylvania politics," he said. "It moves at a glacial pace here."

From a financial standpoint, Kane's re-election chances do not look good, either.

When Kane took office in 2013, she had $592,248 in her campaign war chest, Pennsylvania Department of State campaign finance records show. In 2014, she raised just $75,236 and spent $94,266, leaving $573,218 in her campaign account. At the same time, the campaign is reporting it owes $1.65 million to Kane's husband, whom she is divorcing in Lackawanna County Family Court.

The drop in campaign donations shows donors are holding back due to Kane's uncertain legal and political issues, said G. Terry Madonna, political science professor and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. The bigger issue is whether Democrats will push another candidate to take on Kane in 2016, he said.

None of it is good for Kane, Baldino said. If the Supreme Court had ruled in her favor, Ferman decides not to prosecute or Kane is acquitted at a later date, he said, Kane's career might be too badly damaged for her to survive politically.